MAEBASHI–Visitor numbers remain low at some once-popular autumn tourist sites in Japan, amid lingering concerns about radiation in food more than a year after the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Akagi Onuma, a caldera lake atop Mount Akagiyama in northern Maebashi, usually attracts 25,000 tourists to fish for freshwater smelt during a seven-month season starting in September.
But visitor numbers to the area in Gunma Prefecture have fallen by 90 percent compared with levels prior to the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. This autumn, about 100 boats lie idle along the shore. On autumnal weekends in the past, all boats would have been rented out.
Continue reading at Lingering radiation means continued chill for some tourist hotspots
